Virginia Evans, the Women’s prize-shortlisted novelist, has shared the books that shaped her life, from childhood favourites to later discoveries. She recalled early reading with her sister, including The Velveteen Rabbit and Shel Silverstein’s poems, and described a love for mysteries and fantasy like Nancy Drew, The Boxcar Children, Narnia, and The Wind in the Willows. ‘I loved books about things that can’t exist,’ she said, citing escapism into worlds of talking animals and time travel.
At 15, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath changed her understanding of fiction. ‘It was my first real understanding of what fiction can do,’ she said, noting how it stretched her empathy. Joan Didion also left a lasting impact, with Evans saying, ‘Every time I read her work, I am changed in some way.’ Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies inspired her to become a writer, while she returned to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in her late 20s after an early failed attempt.
Evans regularly rereads Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Steinbeck’s East of Eden. She avoids Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, having been ‘terrified’ by it. She wept through Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women before the 2019 film, identifying with the mother figure. Currently, she is rereading Sue Miller’s While I Was Gone, and her comfort reads include The Uncommon Reader, Beautiful Ruins, and I Capture the Castle.
